The man that got away by Lynne Truss

Constable Twitten Mystery book 2. Bloomsbury, 2019. ISBN: 9781408890530.
(Age: Adult) Themes: Detective novel, Deception, Subterfuge, Murder, Mystery. Young Constable Twitten is very sharp, he has read Mitford's Noblesse oblige and knows that the language a suspect uses can betray his origins, whether upper or lower class. He also has a mind for detail, and regularly updates his notebook with observations and paths of inquiry. Unfortunately however, he has to contend with the clumsy ineptness of Sergeant Brunswick and the vain delusions of his superior, Inspector Steine. And then there is their tea lady Mrs Groynes, whom Twitten believes to be a villainous mastermind. But nobody believes him.
First there is the discovery of a body, in a deck chair on Brighton Beach, not a suicide as Steine too readily dismisses, but a murder committed in broad daylight amidst other holiday makers on the shore. Twitten continues to follow his leads, determined to solve the crime, but it just becomes more and more convoluted the deeper he gets. It involves two sweethearts, a family of thugs, and string of confidence tricksters. Twitten's colleague Brunswick goes undercover as a trumpet player in the local nightclub, joining a whole gang of double agents. Fortunately for the reader, at this point Truss, the author, provides us with a little list of who's who.
There are many odd characters and funny scenes; in fact one scene is just so hysterically funny, it just caps off the whole book.
The man that got away is the second in the Constable Twitten Mystery series, and while it easily stands alone, it does make the reader curious to read its predecessor. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy the Miss Marple type of detective story with a lot of quirky characters adding red herrings to the plot.
Helen Eddy